While it took some time to get this event together, as life tends to get in the way of eating burgers with big groups of your friends, the MCBC was happy to get together and enjoy some high class fast food burgers at Taystee’s.
A review at Taystee’s was a long time coming. We did a review at Brome in 2017 (which has since expanded to downtown Detroit), where I discussed the popularity of the halal burger trend in Dearborn and the ferocity with which the public consumed it. The instagrammability of these burgers is palpable, and their focus on classic burger restaurant items makes it instantly appealing to all backgrounds. While California Burgerz in Hamtramck takes a similar approach as these restaurants with their halal approach to American burger joints, it focuses only on one particular famous California chain to emulate. Famous Hamburger, Good Burger, and Taystee’s take a wholly unique approach. With a suggestion by longtime burger clubber Phil (Ten plus years of Burger Club experience!) who was craving a Taystee’s burger, we took a trip down I-94 to Dearborn.
Taystee’s main focus is their toppings. Their workers talk up their Notch-yo burger topped with lettuce, tomato, jalapeno, grilled onions, swiss, pepper jack cheese, nacho cheese, beef bacon, nacho cheese doritos, and hot sauce on an onion bun. This burger with a CVS receipt sized ingredient list won an award for best burger at a Burger Brawl in Detroit in 2016, which they proudly display on their menu and with a trophy in the store. It effectively sums up their menu’s theme – lots of options, lots of toppings, something for everyone.
What’s not to like with a description like that? Well, maybe one thing, depending on what kind of person you are – Taystee’s is in a gas station. A BP, specifically, on Ford road, directly across from Ford’s Drive-In, close enough to the Ford Rouge plant and administration buildings as well as other industrial businesses. Taystee’s is not the first restaurant to open in this space. It was originally the home of the original Good Burger, whose popularity allowed them to expand to three different standalone storefronts. The setup was very similar, but Taystee’s popularity has allowed the small restaurant space to expand into a little more space and pack a good amount of tables in their portion of the building.
They’ve made this work pretty well, despite the small size. Order at one end of the counter, get your name called, pick up condiments and drinks in a different area. It’s much like many giant franchise fast food restaurants, but a little more condensed. The concept might seem weird, but it’s hard to argue against the fact that the restaurant is wildly popular. People love these burgers. Every table was full when we got in at 1 pm on a Sunday, with several other groups waiting for takeout.
Their odd situation has its quirks and its drawbacks. A keymaster arcade machine for winning sneakers is prominently displayed on the path to the dining area, with a lot of expensive single shoes and the note that ‘sizes are adjustable’. You can grab non-fountain drinks on your way out the door or get some gas if needed. But the parking situation is bad, and cars line up along the edges of the lot to go in for food. And despite the amount of tables they are able to get in the dining space, we still opted to take our food over to Downey Brewing – a very short drive – because we could not fit ten people in there comfortably.
Downey is one of my favorite laid-back breweries in the area, which is often skipped over by tourists in favor of bigger breweries like Founder’s, Batch and Atwater. Their loss! The beers are solid, the service is incredibly friendly, and they have a giant warehouse space to pack all your burger-loving friends into.
Downey doesn’t serve food, but they do let you bring in whatever you’d like. When you’re done eating, you can play darts on actual cork boards, or participate in one of their yoga groups or bike rides. They’re passionate about what they do and make a real commitment to being part of their community in very positive ways. We’re not rating Downey here, but I will say that I personally love their space and what they do.
Because their menu includes a build-a-burger option with a slew of topping options for both the fries and the burgers, and a large pre-built burger menu, you can really order any way you want here. Chicken and veggie patties are also available if you’re not into their ground beef. Since it’s a halal restaurant, all the bacon is beef, which is not quite the same for some of us. Taystee’s also has two different kind of fries with four different kinds of seasonings and a surprisingly big selection of sides, wraps, hot dogs and quesadillas.
On the spectrum of burger extravagance, the MCBC ranged from the standard to the extreme. A few ordered the Taystee Original – lettuce, tomato, pickles, american cheese, grilled onion, and Taystee sauce on a brioche bun. In the middle of the spectrum, we had the notch-yo burger, the cool ranch burger (similar to the notch-yo but with cool ranch doritos and sour cream instead of nacho sauce) and the pizza burger (with fresh basil, mozzarella sticks, pizza sauce, swiss cheese and ranch on a pretzel bun). At the end of the spectrum are the knockwurst burger (1/2 knockwurst plus patty, coleslaw, fries, beef bacon, fried egg, grilled onions, pepper jack and spicy mayo) and Lindsay’s breakfast burger (with a fried egg, beef bacon, swiss cheese, grilled onions, green peppers, tomato and Taystee sauce served between two grilled cheese sandwiches).
Clearly Taystee is pushing their stunt burgers, designed to be flashy and show off the huge amount of things they can stuff on their burgers. Of course, they are good to highlight in newspapers and to entice your friends via social media. But none of that matters if they don’t taste good – nobody is going to head back after an initial visit if they don’t deliver a big punch of flavor and textures they expect.
Luckily, the stunt burgers that we ordered seemed to fare pretty well – they were big, mostly pretty messy, and packed with ingredients. The huge amount of cheese and sauces the cooks use are a big part of it. I found that my chips on the notch-yo held up better than i’d expect, and the contrasting textures were a big help, but I couldn’t taste the bacon among everything else. The properly seasoned but well-done burger patty (advertised as 5 oz) held up with the other toppings and incorporated a big beefy texture into the sometimes overwhelming amount of ingredients that came in one bite. My onion bun held up the ingredients fairly well without getting soggy or falling apart (but others had burgers that did not fare as well).
But the real test of this burger is if it holds up with a relatively normal topping set – those who ordered the classic burger. A common complaint from everyone in this set was that there was too much sauce, making the burger sloppy and detracting from the neatness of the burger. Alex and Phil liked how the patty held up with the seasoning and juiciness despite its well-done level, while Scott and Michelle were not big fans of the overdone burger, with no option to cook it less. Their thoughts were echoed by a few who ordered the stunt burgers as well, and while I liked my notch-yo burger, I fully agree with them on principle. So many flavors together can be overwhelming and subtract from the base experience of eating a good burger, which is a well cooked juicy patty of ground beef, accented by a few toppings or balancing out its inherent punch of umami and fat.
With 5 oz patties, they really have no reason to cook everything well-done or not give doneness options. A third of a pound of meat can be a lot, and even when the patties are thin can be charred at high heat relatively quickly and still have some pink in the middle. Even Brome when they opened were offering the choices of medium versus well done, and now seem to be actually cooking their burgers to order. So if you order a plain cheeseburger at Taystee, you’ll end up with something that is plenty good, but not superlative, with an overcooked texture. If you order a lot of toppings, as is Taystee’s expectation, you might not taste that patty at all.
The fries as well were hit or miss with our group. Some of the flavorings were too nice, some were overpowering and some were too subtle. The lemon pepper fries were barely lemony, while the cajun and ranch fries were loaded with seasoning. They were all cooked correctly, and were plenty crispy without being oily, so I found the toppings unnecessary. Nobody tried the curly fries or other sides this time, but they don’t seem to be highlighted on the menu.
I don’t mean to sound too harsh on Taystee here, because everyone rated their food well, as you can see below, and we all had a great time talking about our wild burgers and how Taystee pulled it off. We talked about what makes a burger experience good, and if the gas station detracts from the experience or not (we’re still undecided). They ended up near the middle of the pack of our ranking, which seems appropriate. They do a lot of things right, the prices are excellent, they have a completely unique take on burgers, and they have a huge variety of options. However, they missed the mark for some of us in a few places.
Their popularity is clearly known to Dearborn and beyond, as is expressed via their social media ratings on Yelp and google, and the packed dining room when we visited. They have a lot of reasons to be liked, and who knows? Maybe that pizza burger is exactly what you need right now.
Ratings:
Music Report: If there was any, you couldn’t hear it.
Burger: 3.9083
Service: 4.45
Atmosphere: 3.98
Value: 4.17
Overall Rating: 4.067
Alex Purdy-Hall- “Really wanted to win some Yeezys from the machine but settled for a mediocre/weird tasting burger instead.” 4/5
Alice– 4.5/5
Carl Hall-Purdy (ordered the notch-yo burger) – “Nacho cheese, onion roll, doritos, jalapenos. Interesting combination. I scarfed it down. It Hit. The. Spot.”4.06/5″
Erik – “It is awesome they have done so well in this space with a huge and varied menu. Could step up with burger doneness levels but all other aspects on point.” 4.5/5
Ian (ordered the Knockwurst burger)- “If they can get away from the fumes of a gas station, I might eat in, but as it is I can’t see myself returning very often. The specialty burgers seem a bit over the top. I lost track of the fried egg, but the knockwurst was Taystee.”4/5
Jeff – “A pizza burger
Mozzarella sticks on top
Who thinks of this shit?
So Cheesy, Such Salt
This burger is delicious
But the meat is lost” 4/5
Lindsay (ordered the breakfast burger) – “Normally don’t go for extravagantly topped burgers, but this was DELICIOUS. Would swap bacon for pickles.” 5/5
Michelle – “-Oversauced
-Good Lettuce
-Good bun” 3.5/5
Phil – “I Don’t put 5s often, but I honestly don’t know what else I could ask for from this burger. The brioche and grilled onions make it sweeter than most burgers, but the patty is savory enough to make it taste complex. Sweet. Savory. Taystee. (MAYBE too much sauce, sloppy sloppy)” 5/5
Scott – “Should have tried to order at least mid-rare. Patty was decently seasoned but overcooked. Way too much sauce.” 4/5
Taystee’s Burgers
10419 Ford Rd, Dearborn, MI 48126
Phone: (313) 724-6535
(Thank you Carl for use of your photos!)
Motor City Burger Club 
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